The Photo Detective

This week, Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective, is joined by Kathy Amoroso, the Manager of Information Technology at the Maine Historical Society. She also serves as the Outreach Coordinator of the Maine Memory Network (MMN), a collaborative project with historical societies and other historical non-profits across the state. Anyone can access the site, and they encourage users to share their Maine recollections. Kathy and Maureen discuss the different records that MMN has, all of which can inspire your own research.

Related Episodes:

Episode 84: U.S. Naval Photo Collections: Online Resources You Can Use

Episode 103: Organize, Preserve and Share with Collectionaire.com

Links:

• Maine Memory Network
• Sign up for my newsletter.
• Watch my YouTube Channel.
• Like the Photo Detective Facebook Page so you get notified of my Facebook Live videos.
• Need help organizing your photos? Check out the Essential Photo Organizing Video Course.
• Need help identifying family photos? Check out the Identifying Family Photographs Online Course.
• Have a photo you need help identifying? Sign up for photo consultation.

About My Guest:

Kathy started working at the Maine Historical Society in October 2001 as the Outreach Coordinator of the Maine Memory Network one of the country’s first collaborative online museums and archives. Kathy has been with the Society for 20 years involved in managing all things digital, including their four websites, all internal information technology, and audio/video needs, workstation and networking, image rights and reproduction services, and consulting on various projects. She trains contributing partners on how to digitize and catalog their collections and create online exhibits. She has a degree in Communications (video production focus) and Psychology from the University of Miami and training and experience in professional video production, website management, and information design.

About Maureen Taylor:

Maureen the author of several books and hundreds of articles and her television appearances include The View and The Today Show (where she researched and presented a complete family tree for host Meredith Vieira).  She’s been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Better Homes and Gardens, The Boston Globe, Martha Stewart Living, Germany’s top newspaper Der Spiegel, American Spirit, and The New York Times. Maureen was recently a spokesperson and photograph expert for MyHeritage.com, an internationally known family history website, and also writes guidebooks, scholarly articles, and online columns for such media as Smithsonian.com. Learn more at Maureentaylor.com

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts

I'm thrilled to be offering something new. Photo investigations. These collaborative one-on-one sessions. Look at your family photos then you and I meet to discuss your mystery images. And find out how each clue and hint might contribute to your family history. Find out more by going to maureentaylor.com and clicking on family photo investigations. 

Support the show

This week Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective, is joined by Melissa Barker, who is known affectionately as The Archive Lady and is a Certified Archives Manager and Public Historian, currently working at the Houston County Tennessee Archives & Museum. The two discuss how archives and genealogy overlap, how you can preserve your ancestor’s heritage through archives, and how sometimes an archive can help you discover something about your ancestor that you never knew.

Related Episodes:

Episode 56  Disaster Preparedness for the Family Archive

Episode 82: Building an Archive for Our Times

Links:

• Houston County Historical Society
• A Genealogist in the Archives
• Sign up for my newsletter.
• Watch my YouTube Channel.
• Like the Photo Detective Facebook Page so you get notified of my Facebook Live videos.
• Need help organizing your photos? Check out the Essential Photo Organizing Video Course.
• Need help identifying family photos? Check out the Identifying Family Photographs Online Course.
• Have a photo you need help identifying? Sign up for photo consultation.

About My Guest:

Melissa Barker is a Certified Archives Manager and Public Historian currently working at the Houston County, Tennessee Archives & Museum. She is affectionally known as The Archive Lady to the genealogy community. She lectures teaches, and writes about the genealogy research process, researching in archives and records preservation. She conducts virtual presentations across the United States and other countries for various genealogy groups and societies. She writes a popular blog entitled A Genealogist in the Archives and is a well-known published book reviewer. She has been a Professional Genealogist for the past 17 years with expertise in Tennessee records. She has been researching her own family history for the past 32 years.

About Maureen Taylor:

Maureen is the author of several books and hundreds of articles and her television appearances include The View and The Today Show (where she researched and presented a complete family tree for host Meredith Vieira).  She’s been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Better Homes and Gardens, The Boston Globe, Martha Stewart Living, Germany’s top newspaper Der Spiegel, American Spirit, and The New York Times. Maureen was recently a spokesperson and photograph expert for MyHeritage.com, an internationally known family history website, and also writes guidebooks, scholarly articles, and online columns for such media as Smithsonian.com. Learn more at Maureentaylor.com

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts.

I'm thrilled to be offering something new. Photo investigations. These collaborative one-on-one sessions. Look at your family photos then you and I meet to discuss your mystery images. And find out how each clue and hint might contribute to your family history. Find out more by going to maureentaylor.com and clicking on family photo investigations. 

Support the show

This week Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective, is joined by Michael Murphy, Librarian, and Archivist, as well as Charlotte Engel, who is the clothing historian from the New Canaan Historical Society. The two have been making the rounds on TikTok lately for using behind-the-scenes footage to educate their followers more about exhibits and historical clothing. The two also dive into how they care for historical clothing in an effort to preserve it and help educate future generations about the past through clothing.

Related Episodes:

Episode 127 Beautiful but Deadly: Toxic Fashion and Criminal Dress

Episode 91: Suffragists and Suffragettes: Fashion and the Vote

Links:

• New Canaan Historical Society
• Sign up for my newsletter.
• Watch my YouTube Channel.
• Like the Photo Detective Facebook Page so you get notified of my Facebook Live videos.
• Need help organizing your photos? Check out the Essential Photo Organizing Video Course.
• Need help identifying family photos? Check out the Identifying Family Photographs Online Course.
• Have a photo you need help identifying? Sign up for photo consultation.

About My Guests:

Charlotte Engel and Michael Murphy work for the New Canaan Museum & Historical Society in New Canaan, Connecticut. Mike is the Museum’s archivist, and Charlotte is the Museum’s clothing historian. They work together as part of an ongoing project to digitize the Museum’s historic clothing collection.

About Maureen Taylor:

Maureen is a frequent keynote speaker on photo identification, photograph preservation, and family history at historical and genealogical societies, museums, conferences, libraries, and other organizations across the U.S., London and Canada.  She’s the author of several books and hundreds of articles and her television appearances include The View and The Today Show (where she researched and presented a complete family tree for host Meredith Vieira).  She’s been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Better Homes and Gardens, The Boston Globe, Martha Stewart Living, Germany’s top newspaper Der Spiegel, American Spirit, and The New York Times. Maureen was recently a spokesperson and photograph expert for MyHeritage.com, an internationally known family history website and also writes guidebooks, scholarly articles and online columns for such media as Smithsonian.com. Learn more at Maureentaylor.com

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts.

I'm thrilled to be offering something new. Photo investigations. These collaborative one-on-one sessions. Look at your family photos then you and I meet to discuss your mystery images. And find out how each clue and hint might contribute to your family history. Find out more by going to maureentaylor.com and clicking on family photo investigations. 

Support the show

This week Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective, is joined by Emma Jolly, a professional genealogist and historical researcher, based in Edinburgh, Scotland. She and Maureen dive into British ancestry, and how you can begin your research, or even elevate it for those records you may be missing. She was one of the researchers on an episode of the Wedding Detectives on the BBC.

Related Episodes:

Episode 31: A World War I Resource

Episode 132: The Wedding Detectives

Links:

• Emma Jolly
• The Wedding Detectives
• Sign up for my newsletter.
• Watch my YouTube Channel.
• Like the Photo Detective Facebook Page so you get notified of my Facebook Live videos.
• Need help organizing your photos? Check out the Essential Photo Organizing Video Course.
• Need help identifying family photos? Check out the Identifying Family Photographs Online Course.
• Have a photo you need help identifying? Sign up for photo consultation.

About My Guest:

Emma is a professional genealogist, writer, and historical researcher, based in Edinburgh.

Along with being awarded the Russell Finch prize for best History MA dissertation, Emma has attained the IHGS Higher Certificate in Genealogy.

She regularly writes for family history publications and is the author of four books as well as contributing to works such as the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Emma is a very active member of several historical societies including the Society of Genealogists and is a member of the Association of Genealogists and Researchers in Archives (AGRA).

About Maureen Taylor:

Maureen is a frequent keynote speaker on photo identification, photograph preservation, and family history at historical and genealogical societies, museums, conferences, libraries, and other organizations across the U.S., London and Canada.  She’s the author of several books and hundreds of articles and her television appearances include The View and The Today Show (where she researched and presented a complete family tree for host Meredith Vieira).  She’s been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Better Homes and Gardens, The Boston Globe, Martha Stewart Living, Germany’s top newspaper Der Spiegel, American Spirit, and The New York Times. Maureen was recently a spokesperson and photograph expert for MyHeritage.com, an internationally known family history website, and also writes guidebooks, scholarly articles, and online columns for such media as Smithsonian.com. Learn more at Maureentaylor.com

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts.

I'm thrilled to be offering something new. Photo investigations. These collaborative one-on-one sessions. Look at your family photos then you and I meet to discuss your mystery images. And find out how each clue and hint might contribute to your family history. Find out more by going to maureentaylor.com and clicking on family photo investigations. 

Support the show

This week Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective, is joined by Nancy Desmond, one of the co-founders of MemoryWeb, a platform dedicated to helping individuals save and store their family photos. In this episode, they discuss how to organize photos before uploading – which makes the process easier and even more fun for those digging into their photo collections. 

Related Episodes:

Episode 134: Unlocking the Shoebox

Episode 50: Scan Your Photos with Mitch Goldstone

Links:

• Sign up for my newsletter.
• Watch my YouTube Channel.
• Like the Photo Detective Facebook Page so you get notified of my Facebook Live videos.
• Need help organizing your photos? Check out the Essential Photo Organizing Video Course.
• Need help identifying family photos? Check out the Identifying Family Photographs Online Course.
• Have a photo you need help identifying? Sign up for photo consultation.

About My Guest:

Nancy Desmond is a co-founder of MemoryWeb.me a digital photo organizer

About Maureen Taylor:

Maureen is a frequent keynote speaker on photo identification, photograph preservation, and family history at historical and genealogical societies, museums, conferences, libraries, and other organizations across the U.S., London and Canada.  She’s the author of several books and hundreds of articles and her television appearances include The View and The Today Show (where she researched and presented a complete family tree for host Meredith Vieira).  She’s been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Better Homes and Gardens, The Boston Globe, Martha Stewart Living, Germany’s top newspaper Der Spiegel, American Spirit, and The New York Times. Maureen was recently a spokesperson and photograph expert for MyHeritage.com, an internationally known family history website and also writes guidebooks, scholarly articles and online columns for such media as Smithsonian.com. Learn more at Maureentaylor.com

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts.

I'm thrilled to be offering something new. Photo investigations. These collaborative one-on-one sessions. Look at your family photos then you and I meet to discuss your mystery images. And find out how each clue and hint might contribute to your family history. Find out more by going to maureentaylor.com and clicking on family photo investigations. 

Support the show

This week Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective, is joined by Lawrence Verria, whose first book The Kissing Sailor, takes a look at an iconic World War II photo and how to identify it. In the perfect intersection between history and photo identification, Maureen and Lawrence discuss this famous photo, and how even a photo icon can leave plenty of mystery, and twists and turns to discover the answers. 

Related Episodes: 

Episode 75: One Man's World War I Journey

Episode 105: Women in the Dark: Female Photographers, 1850-1900

Links: 

• Sign up for my newsletter.
• Watch my YouTube Channel.
• Like the Photo Detective Facebook Page so you get notified of my Facebook Live videos.
• Need help organizing your photos? Check out the Essential Photo Organizing Video Course.
• Need help identifying family photos? Check out the Identifying Family Photographs Online Course.
• Have a photo you need help identifying? Sign up for photo consultation.

About My Guest:

Lawrence Verria is the Social Studies Department Chair at North Kingstown High School, and Rhode Island's 2000 Teacher of the Year. He will be entering his 40th year teaching United States History and Civics. He is the recipient of the Susan B. Wilson Civic Education Merit Award and Rhode Island College's Evelyn Walsh Prize for excellence in history studies. "The Kissing Sailor" is Verria's first book, co-authored with George Galdorisi. Verria plans to publish his second book, "The Cool Moose: Robert J. Healey Jr., Beyond the Beard.

About Maureen Taylor:

Maureen is a frequent keynote speaker on photo identification, photograph preservation, and family history at historical and genealogical societies, museums, conferences, libraries, and other organizations across the U.S., London, and Canada.  She’s the author of several books and hundreds of articles and her television appearances include The View and The Today Show (where she researched and presented a complete family tree for host Meredith Vieira).  She’s been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Better Homes and Gardens, The Boston Globe, Martha Stewart Living, Germany’s top newspaper Der Spiegel, American Spirit, and The New York Times. Maureen was recently a spokesperson and photograph expert for MyHeritage.com, an internationally known family history website, and also writes guidebooks, scholarly articles, and online columns for such media as Smithsonian.com. Learn more at Maureentaylor.com

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts.

I'm thrilled to be offering something new. Photo investigations. These collaborative one-on-one sessions. Look at your family photos then you and I meet to discuss your mystery images. And find out how each clue and hint might contribute to your family history. Find out more by going to maureentaylor.com and clicking on family photo investigations. 

Support the show

I'm thrilled to be offering something new. Photo investigations. These collaborative one-on-one sessions. Look at your family photos then you and I meet to discuss your mystery images. And find out how each clue and hint might contribute to your family history. Find out more by going to maureentaylor.com and clicking on family photo investigations. 

Support the show

This week Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective, is joined by author Maud Newton – who recently published Ancestor Trouble: A Reckoning and Reconciliation. She and Maureen dive into what it means to have a skeleton in the closet, or an ancestor who didn’t live up to the same standards we do. It’s the embarrassing and shameful actions of our ancestors – and what to do about it – that drive this conversation. Or, as we discuss in the episode, “Everybody’s family is different and everybody’s family has something, even if they don’t admit it.”

Related Episodes:

Episode 22: A Murder Mystery with the Literary Detective

Episode 78: A Grandmother’s Gift with Gonzalo Luengo

Links:

• Maud Newton
• Sign up for my newsletter.
• Watch my YouTube Channel.
• Like the Photo Detective Facebook Page so you get notified of my Facebook Live videos.
• Need help organizing your photos? Check out the Essential Photo Organizing Video Course.
• Need help identifying family photos? Check out the Identifying Family Photographs Online Course.
• Have a photo you need help identifying? Sign up for photo consultation.

About My Guest:

Maud Newton has written for The New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, The New York Times Book Review, and Oxford American. She grew up in Miami and graduated from the University of Florida with degrees in English and law.

About Maureen Taylor:

Maureen is a frequent keynote speaker on photo identification, photograph preservation, and family history at historical and genealogical societies, museums, conferences, libraries, and other organizations across the U.S., London, and Canada.  She’s the author of several books and hundreds of articles and her television appearances include The View and The Today Show (where she researched and presented a complete family tree for host Meredith Vieira).  She’s been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Better Homes and Gardens, The Boston Globe, Martha Stewart Living, Germany’s top newspaper Der Spiegel, American Spirit, and The New York Times. Maureen was recently a spokesperson and photograph expert for MyHeritage.com, an internationally known family history website, and also writes guidebooks, scholarly articles, and online columns for such media as Smithsonian.com. Learn more at Maureentaylor.com

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts.

I'm thrilled to be offering something new. Photo investigations. These collaborative one-on-one sessions. Look at your family photos then you and I meet to discuss your mystery images. And find out how each clue and hint might contribute to your family history. Find out more by going to maureentaylor.com and clicking on family photo investigations. 

Support the show

This week, Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective, is joined by Tom Butler, an artist whose work may be controversial to some listeners. Tom uses unidentified cabinet cards to create art, often altering the original image to enhance them, which begs the question if he is destroying the image, or creating something even better than before.

Related Episodes:

Bonus Episode: Stitching on Pictures with Stitchography by Emma

Episode 153: Ellis Island Immigrant Photo Identified

Links:

• Sign up for my newsletter.
• Watch my YouTube Channel.
• Like the Photo Detective Facebook Page so you get notified of my Facebook Live videos.
• Need help organizing your photos? Check out the Essential Photo Organizing Video Course.
• Need help identifying family photos? Check out the Identifying Family Photographs Online Course.
• Have a photo you need help identifying? Sign up for photo consultation.

About My Guest:

For the last twelve years artist, Tom Butler has been appropriating anonymous Victorian cabinet cards with incorporated personal symbols such as hair, masks, flowers, and geometric abstractions, painted on the surface with gouache. In the process, he attempts to reveal the imagined personalities of the sitters while in the knowledge that he is cloaking them with parts of himself. He also makes self-portraits and uses cabinet cards and found photographs to create collages, sculptures, and rubbings to express both a love of the medium and a critique of photography as a whole.

Butler was born in London, England and now lives in Portland ME, USA. He studied at Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton, Chelsea College of Art, UAL, and the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL. He exhibits internationally and his work can be found in collections such as The British Museum and Soho House.

About Maureen Taylor:

Maureen is a frequent keynote speaker on photo identification, photograph preservation, and family history at historical and genealogical societies, museums, conferences, libraries, and other organizations across the U.S., London, and Canada.  She’s the author of several books and hundreds of articles and her television appearances include The View and The Today Show (where she researched and presented a complete family tree for host Meredith Vieira).  She’s been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Better Homes and Gardens, The Boston Globe, Martha Stewart Living, Germany’s top newspaper Der Spiegel, American Spirit, and The New York Times. Maureen was recently a spokesperson and photograph expert for MyHeritage.com, an internationally known family history website, and also writes guidebooks, scholarly articles, and online columns for such media as Smithsonian.com. Learn more at Maureentaylor.com

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts.

I'm thrilled to be offering something new. Photo investigations. These collaborative one-on-one sessions. Look at your family photos then you and I meet to discuss your mystery images. And find out how each clue and hint might contribute to your family history. Find out more by going to maureentaylor.com and clicking on family photo investigations. 

Support the show

This week, Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective, is joined by Greg Kozlick, who helped reunite a woman with long-lost wedding photos – in the story of a photo reunion that’s sure to tug on the heartstrings. 

Related Episodes:

Episode 32: The Man Behind Dead Fred

Bonus: Lost history Discovered in the Recycling with Paul Moar

Links:

• Returning the Slides
• Sign up for my newsletter.
• Watch my YouTube Channel.
• Like the Photo Detective Facebook Page so you get notified of my Facebook Live videos.
• Need help organizing your photos? Check out the Essential Photo Organizing Video Course.
• Need help identifying family photos? Check out the Identifying Family Photographs Online Course.
• Have a photo you need help identifying? Sign up for photo consultation.

About My Guest:

Greg Kozlick has a deep passion for photography including portraiture, architectural images, and photojournalism. He is currently a student at Aurora University.

About Maureen Taylor:

Maureen is a frequent keynote speaker on photo identification, photograph preservation, and family history at historical and genealogical societies, museums, conferences, libraries, and other organizations across the U.S., London, and Canada.  She’s the author of several books and hundreds of articles and her television appearances include The View and The Today Show (where she researched and presented a complete family tree for host Meredith Vieira).  She’s been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Better Homes and Gardens, The Boston Globe, Martha Stewart Living, Germany’s top newspaper Der Spiegel, American Spirit, and The New York Times. Maureen was recently a spokesperson and photograph expert for MyHeritage.com, an internationally known family history website, and also writes guidebooks, scholarly articles, and online columns for such media as Smithsonian.com. Learn more at Maureentaylor.com

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts

I'm thrilled to be offering something new. Photo investigations. These collaborative one-on-one sessions. Look at your family photos then you and I meet to discuss your mystery images. And find out how each clue and hint might contribute to your family history. Find out more by going to maureentaylor.com and clicking on family photo investigations. 

Support the show